Need Help with banding issues!

[Emil]

Hi everyone, I am writing here because I tried so many things and can’t seem to fix my issue.  I replaced my stock 60 Hz screen on my Dell G3 laptop with a 120Hz  8-bit TN panel and I’m having color banding issues.

It looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/DUwws4d 
I attached a video as well.
I used this website: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gradient.php

I’m pretty sure this is a software issue because If I uninstall all the video drivers, it goes away.

Things I have tried:

-Re-installed Intel and Nvidia drivers countlessly, trying different versions from Dell website and from Intel/Nvidia.
-Color managed screen with default srgb profile and many other profiles using windows 10 color manager. I get a different type of banding.
-DisplayCal color management.
-Forced 0-255 luminance with this utility (4th option) https://pcmonitors.info/articles/correcting-hdmi-colour-on-nvidia-and-amd-gpus/.
-Reduced refresh rate to 100 Hz and 60Hz using CRU utility.

Observations:

-If I set my preferred graphic options to Intel graphics in the Nvidia control panel, disable Windows Night Light and use the ac adapter, there is no banding in the system (browsing, Windows UI, Youtube). I still get it in some games (Battlefront II menus (severe),  Project Cars 2 menus (severe) and game play). If I recall correctly, this banding was not apparent before the upgrade.

-Enabling Windows Night Light will re-introduce the banding system wide.

-If banding occurs when plugged in, sometimes shutting down computer and restarting it will remove it.

-There is always banding in battery mode.

I can’t access the screen settings in Nvidia panel because I’m on a laptop and the Intel graphic settings are very basic. Many people have done this upgrade on their G3 and none have reported this issue.

The screen is well plugged in. I have also put back my old screen but the issue is still present. I don’t know what to do honestly. The new screen is really good. It has great color coverage (100 % srgb, 90% Adobe RGB and 90% DCI-P3) and viewing angles are good for a TN panel. It’s just the banding that bugs me, especially when watching Youtube and playing games. You can really see it when there is gradations.

I am really hoping someone can help me out with this. If there is a calibration tweak of some kind of setting in DisplayCal I could try to fix this, it would be appreciated.

Screen: Chi Mei N156HHE-GA1 120Hz real 8 bit TN screen.
Laptop: Dell G3, i5-8300h, 16 GB ram, Intel UHD 630 Graphics, Geforce 1050 Ti 4 GB, 500 GB SSD.

Thank you!

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[Vincent]

 

-Enabling Windows Night Light will re-introduce the banding system wide.

-If banding occurs when plugged in, sometimes shutting down computer and restarting it will remove it.

Expected, MS issue AFAIK.

MS LUT loader kicks in, and when it happens, there is LUT truncation even if you try to use DisplayCAL, have a >8bit GPU LUT hardware, drivers that support it, etc… unless you reboot.

[Emil]

Thank you! It turns out it’s a bug from the new Windows 1903 update. It just happens that I was replacing my screen during the same time!

https://www.eizoglobal.com/support/compatibility/software/problem_windows10_may_2019_update/index.html

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

[Author]

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